We watched Eurovision on Saturday night. It was quite good fun… I’m not sure I’d like to do it more than once a year, though! However, just to be controversial I thought I’d post up a rant about it…
What is the point of Eurovision? As far as I can tell, it exists for the following reasons: 1. A musical contest; 2. To ‘unite’ Europe; 3. Entertainment.
I think it pretty much falls flat on its face for all those three categories:
1. A musical contest. Nope, sorry. If this was a musical contest, then the countries involved would submit songs that were actually good. Take, for example, our entry this year. What on earth were they thinking? It was rubbish! I felt ashamed to be British… in no way is that representative of what British pop music is like. I can’t I know what pop music is like in other countries, but I’m pretty sure that many of them have decent pop music as well. Also, the voting does not reflect the music, which brings me onto my next point…
2. To ‘unite’ Europe. Again, nope. The political voting which goes on is an absolute joke. I know that it’s not a serious contest, but if that actually is the case – why bother doing political voting then? If it’s just a joke, then vote for whichever song you like. Don’t bring politics into it. I actually think this is the key reason why Eurovision should be re-thought: look at the placement of the Western European nations in the results. None of them did very well… admittedly this might be because their songs were rubbish, but I think a large part of it was that there are so many Eastern European countries and all of them voted for each other. Something could be done about this, but as this is a rant I won’t bother going into it now :p
I don’t think Eurovision unites Europe at all – it just highlights which countries are popular and which ones aren’t.
3. Entertainment. Admittedly, Eurovision does have an entertainment value. Watching people sing ridiculous songs on TV is fun, you can laugh at them… having said that, I think it would be far more entertaining to have proper music in the Eurovision. I’d much rather watch a decent band as opposed to the utter tripe we’ve produced over the past few years.
Anyway, I think I’d probably better stop there… I know that things aren’t likely to change (certainly not in the near future), but I just wanted to rant anyway…
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